


The Only Absolution I Need

by wispenwillows



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 23:12:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7733500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wispenwillows/pseuds/wispenwillows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was his God, and love was his religion. And he was nothing but a sinner at her feet, between her legs, between her teeth. Those heady years of sex and sin were no more than a dream until she came and made it real again, crushed the altar beneath her heels. She always was an iconoclast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Absolution I Need

**Author's Note:**

> a poem for lost youth, when the only distance between me and you was the angry tune of a sorry truth.

If there was one thing Jesse Custer knew in life, it was this: God lived in the filaments of Tulip O’Hare’s soul. Kissing her felt like immolation, like the world on fire, but he couldn’t stop himself from pressing closer and catching the flame. O Lord, if this was what Heaven felt like, then he never wanted anything other than this.

Then she’d punched him. Sharp, fast, sudden, and okay, he deserved that, even as he felt the tickle of blood in his nose.

Since they were children, Jesse had known Tulip to be something more than holy, less than damned. She fought like the devil was on her tail and she was clawing her way to salvation. He didn’t tell her this. She wouldn’t have believed it. She’d never believed in God, not the way he did.

But really, she was the one thing that made him believe all the more that someone had created this universe, for the divine craftsman had shown Himself in every line of her making. The soft fall of her eyelashes, coated in sunshine. The swell of her breast with each breath she took. It all felt like devotion, even when her mouth pulled back into that snarl of a smile and she said something that broke your heart.

There was a time. There was.

There was a time before she came blasting back into town when he’d thought the church would be enough. It was the sacred ground of memory. Was a time when time had been held back here, and nothing yet had withered. The wood, the organ, the soft light that fell like a lover’s touch on the neat lines of the pews. Hallowed, haloed, hollow. Standing behind the pulpit, Jesse could pretend that nothing had happened yet. Nothing yet had been lost. Not childhood, not innocence, not the way they used to run through here the night before a Sunday service. Not the way her loose tooth poked through her smile. Not their child, now distant as a reprieve. Not happiness, firm in their grasp.

He could stand up at pulpit, a shepherd to his flock, and pretend like his wasn’t the soul in need of saving, but when she came thundering through town in that rickety car of hers, it was hard to keep up the farce. Hard to believe in any God but her, with her Old Testament justice and the hard set of her eyes and the soft bend of her mouth.

He’d wanted to devour her. Or maybe she wanted to devour him; it wasn’t so clear anymore.

“So, let me tell you about this job,” Tulip had said, long vowels and cocksure grin. He looked over at her, haloed by halogen light, an angel of this incandescent dark. Tulip didn’t take kindly to no.

She hadn’t said she was coming back. Hadn’t sent word ahead. Smart of her, all things considered, since all Jesse seemed capable of doing anymore was running from her. He’d run the first time, after Dallas. Then he’d run again, at Walter’s. He’d have kept running, too, if she hadn’t chased him down. Seemed fitting, though, for all the chasing he’d done.

Years spent building an altar to the memory of her skin against his, the smell of cigarettes in her hair, on his tongue, in her mouth. She was his God, and love was his religion. And he was nothing but a sinner at her feet, between her legs, between her teeth. Those heady years of sex and sin were no more than a dream until she came and made it real again, crushed the altar beneath her heels. She always was an iconoclast. _Your father, your Father, you now, a father_ –– what did it matter to her? Tulip always did what Tulip wanted, and wasn't that why you loved her? Did know how to stop loving her?

What did Jesse want but Tulip?

Had Jesse ever wanted other than Tulip?

“Kiss me,” he said, the day they went in search of God. _Swallow me whole.  
_

She tumbled into him, more teeth and bones than mouth and flesh, a subsumation complete. Jesse and Tulip, Tulip and Jesse, Tulip, Jesse, _tulipandjesseandjesseandtulipandtulipandtulip_ –– it had always been the two of them against the world, against the world, against the world. It was ferocious, this kiss of compulsion. Biting and pressing and fangs and claws. That was what Tulip did best, taking the things people forced on her and taking them into her own.

He might have been drunk or dreaming or hell, even dead, but the one thing Jesse Custer would not forget was the taste of her lips: a little sour, a little sweet, as if she’d been eating too much candy, her smile, her freckles, the smell of lemons and too much sun. Her eyes, her hair, her collarbones. He could have drowned in her, and she seemed willing to let him, the way her hands curled around the architecture of his neck to pull him closer, closer.

 _Heavenly Father, forgive me my trespasses_ , but if this was Heaven, he didn’t need the threat of Hell to compel him to salvation. And if this was Hell, well, then he didn’t need Heaven to save him.

 


End file.
